Building something special

A lot of people think games are about escapism - abandoning reality and having a play around in a make-believe world for a while. While in some cases they're right, there are plenty of titles that thrive on reality.

Take Bridge Constructor. Here we have a game that tasks you with building bridges. Not cartoon bridges. Not haphazard, slap-dash walkways cobbled together from rudimentary shapes. Honest to goodness, real-life, digital bridges.

Bridge over trouble waters

You start off with a gap, a space between two stretches of road, and a few anchor points. It's your job to use the materials and budget you've been given to create a structure that at least two cars can get across.

To begin with you only have pieces of wood at your disposal, but as the game goes on and the structures you need to build become more demanding you get lengths of steel wire, huge girders, and concrete pillars to build with as well.

Each gap poses its own problems, and there's more than one solution to each of the 30 problems the game presents you with. Getting a couple of cars across your bridge will move you on to the next level, but if you want the highest scores you have to build something strong enough for two trucks to traverse.

Mind the gap

The game manages to build up a real sense of tension as you tap the 'play' button to see whether or not your bridge is sturdy enough. Colour-coded stress markers warp from 'safe' green to 'imminent collapse' red, and watching the pioneering cars who trusted your bridge-building judgement plummet to their doom is a heart-wrenching experience.

Bridge Constructor is tough, and if your bridges aren't up to scratch it'll punish you, but that makes the feeling when you guide some vehicles safely across one of your creations even sweeter.

If you're looking for a slow paced puzzle game with at least a foot and a half in the real world then you could do a lot worse - and, who knows, you might find your true bridge building calling while you're at it.